Tips for maintaining and cleaning leather boots
Step 1:
Preventative treatment
In order to keep your boots in good condition and to protect them against, for example, dirt from the street or rain, it's very important to use high quality shoe-care products.
Therefore, we recommend the use of a protective spray. Since there are so many different shoe sprays available, it's important to choose a spray that has a nurturing effect on leather. If you choose a (cheap) waterproofing spray, there's a good chance that you will indeed protect the leather from some water and dirt, but also that the leather will simultaneously dry out and that it won't look as beautiful for as long.
For that reason, we recommend the Nanopro Spray from Collonil (£10.95), for example. This innovative spray has been developed from nanotechnology and is made up of miniscule particles that, together, ensure a protective permeation of leather, nubuck, suede, and textile.
Step 2:
Maintaining leather
The second step you can take towards the optimum protection of your leather boots or shoes is thorough maintenance. When you don't wear your boots for a while, it's a good idea to store them well. By placing a boot tree in the shaft of the boots, it stops them deteriorating. If the boots do start to deteriorate, then there is a chance of the leather folding and wrinkling, which will make the boot look older and more worn. The cedar wood of this boot tree (see photo on the left) ensures that moisture will be optimally extracted from the boot, so that the inside of the boot will also last longer.
If you haven't worn your boots in a long time, we also advise that you lubricate them with a special leather cream polish. You'll notice that the boots will last for years longer and the leather will stay looking beautiful. It is of course of great importance that the leather is of a high quality, and that you take good care of it.
Step 3:
Cleaning leather
Once the earlier steps have been carefully carried out, you'll see that your leather boots or shoes don't need to cleaned all that often. If they are worn a lot and see a lot of wintery weather conditions, however, your boots will be put to the test and could possibly even be slightly damaged.
In order to bring back the leather's deep colour and shine, our advice would be to carefully clean your boots with a shoe polish in the same colour as the leather. Cleaning and polishing can be done relatively easily with a bristle shoe brush, crepe brush, or simply by using a polishing cloth.
Subsequently follows the most important step of the process: brushing the shoe polish with a buffing brush or a soft cloth. This last step will make your boots shine beautifully.
